[PATCH v5 01/10] crypto: Provide a wrapper function for zeroizing crypto_aes_ctx

From: Thomas Huth

Date: Mon Aug 10 2026 - 05:32:03 EST


From: Thomas Huth <thuth@xxxxxxxxxx>

Several crypto drivers need to zeroize their local crypto_aes_ctx
structures after use to avoid leaking key material on the stack.
Currently some call sites do this with their own memzero_explicit()
call, which is error-prone since it is easy to miss a return path
(what already happened in some drivers). Some other call sites miss
to clear crypto_aes_ctx completely.

Provide an aes_zeroize_ctx() helper that can be used with __cleanup()
to automatically zeroize the context when it goes out of scope.

Acked-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
include/crypto/aes.h | 13 +++++++++++++
1 file changed, 13 insertions(+)

diff --git a/include/crypto/aes.h b/include/crypto/aes.h
index 3279cfa546085..e70607249ae5c 100644
--- a/include/crypto/aes.h
+++ b/include/crypto/aes.h
@@ -159,6 +159,19 @@ static inline int aes_check_keylen(size_t keylen)
int aes_expandkey(struct crypto_aes_ctx *ctx, const u8 *in_key,
unsigned int key_len);

+/**
+ * aes_zeroize_ctx - Clear a crypto_aes_ctx structure
+ * @ctx: The location of the context that should be zeroized
+ *
+ * Explicitly fills the crypto_aes_ctx with zeroes. This should be done
+ * once the context is not required anymore to avoid that its contents
+ * are leaked on the stack or heap (if not using kfree_sensitive()).
+ */
+static inline void aes_zeroize_ctx(struct crypto_aes_ctx *ctx)
+{
+ memzero_explicit(ctx, sizeof(*ctx));
+}
+
/*
* The following functions are temporarily exported for use by the AES mode
* implementations in arch/$(SRCARCH)/crypto/. These exports will go away when
--
2.55.0